How big is the gap between China and the United States in the field of artificial intelligence?

Mondo Technology Updated on 2024-03-06

On November 30, 2022, an epoch-making breakthrough was made in the technology industry, that is, the birth of ChatGPT. As soon as ChatGPT was released, it immediately became popular all over the world. Then, on February 15, 2024, the American Artificial Intelligence Research Center Open AI released the first **generative model "SORA", which can generate a short ** for about one minute by entering text, which once again shocked the world's attention, which caused Chinese people to worry about the widening gap between China and the United States in the field of artificial intelligence. Click on the followers, like them, and let's move on.

From the perspective of the comparison of the number of enterprises, as of the end of June 2023, there are 360,000, about 130,000, accounting for 36%, 5,734 in China, accounting for about 16%, and the total number of global AI unicorn companies reached 291, of which 131 were in the United States and 108 were in China. The total number of industrial talent in the United States is about twice that of China. There are dozens of AI innovation companies like OpenAI in the United States, with a combined market value of nearly $2 trillion, while similar companies in China add up to only $100 billion, less than one-tenth of American companies.

From the comparative analysis of the number of talents, there are about 78,000 employees in 1,078 artificial intelligence companies in the United States, and about 39,000 employees in 592 companies in China, which is about 50% of the United States. The number of basic talents in the United States is 13 percent of China's8 times. In addition, according to the report "The World's Most Influential Artificial Intelligence Scholars", the United States occupies the top position with 1,079 people, accounting for 54% of the total, and China has 280 people, accounting for only 14%.

In addition, among the top 500 scientific research institutions in the world, the United States accounts for more than 300, China only has more than 30, only one-tenth of the United States, hardware, the United States artificial intelligence chips occupy more than 90% of the world's market share, will have a significant restraining effect on the development of Chinese artificial intelligence industry.

From the comparative analysis of the above data, it can be seen that the hotspot engine plan shows that there is still a relatively large gap between China and the United States. As a global technology hegemon, the United States has been leading the development of artificial intelligence, leading the industrial layout of the entire large model, and occupying advantages in R&D capabilities, talent reserves, hardware facilities and financing environment. In contrast, China has the advantage of massive data resources and application scenarios, but it lacks top AI talents, and still lacks leading capabilities in basic theories and original models. The overall strength of the industrial base layer is weak, the accumulation of high-quality data is insufficient, and it is restricted by the United States in the fields of high-end chips and key basic software.

However, due to the huge population size of China, which provides a strong impetus for the development of Chinese's artificial intelligence industry, on August 28, 2023, the China Internet Network Information Center released the 52nd "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network", which shows that as of June 2023, the scale of China's Internet users has reached 107.9 billion people, an increase of 11.09 million from December 2022, and the internet penetration rate reached 764%。As of June, the scale of instant messaging, networking, and short-term users reached 10 respectively4.7 billion people, 104.4 billion people and 102.6 billion people, and the user usage rate is respectively. 8% and 952%。This hundreds of millions of users are more than the U.S. population, and it's growing. This allows Chinese artificial intelligence companies to have a huge market, and every technology invested in the market will get much higher returns than small markets.

Due to China's massive data resources and application scenario advantages, in practical applications, the development speed of Chinese's artificial intelligence industry is quite amazing. In 2016, the scale of Chinese's artificial intelligence industry just exceeded 10 billion yuan. By 2022, the scale of Chinese's artificial intelligence core industry has reached 508 billion yuan, an increase of 50 times. If the United States has led the development of artificial intelligence and completed the development process from 0 to 1, then China will give full play to its late-mover advantage and complete the acceleration from 1 to 100 to catch up. As the largest developing country, China has also made overall planning and deployment in terms of strategic guidance and project implementation, which is divided into three steps. In the first step, by 2020, the overall technology and application of artificial intelligence will be synchronized with the world's advanced level, and the artificial intelligence industry will become a new important economic growth point. The second step is to achieve a major breakthrough in the basic theory of artificial intelligence by 2025, and some technologies and applications will reach the world's leading level; The third step is to reach the world's leading level in AI theory, technology and application by 2030 and become the world's major AI innovation center.

To this end, PwC has given an optimistic outlook on the development prospects of China's artificial intelligence industry: by 2030, the scale of China's artificial intelligence industry will reach 7 trillion US dollars, ranking first in the world; The size of the U.S. artificial intelligence industry is 37 trillion US dollars, ranking second in the world; The size of the European AI industry is 2$5 trillion, in third place. In other words, China's industrial scale will be larger than the United States + Europe combined.

As Mr. Ren Zhengfei has emphasized many times in public: "We have no way out but victory", and in the competitive environment surrounded by tigers and wolves, victory is our only way out.

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